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Psychological States and the Artist: the Problem of Michelangelo

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Psychological States and the Artist: the Problem of Michelangelo Studies in Visual Communication Volume 6 Issue 1 Spring 1980 Article 9 1980 Psychological States and the Artist: The Problem of Michelangelo Jane Kromm Recommended Citation Kromm, J. (1980). Psychological States and the Artist: The Problem of Michelangelo. 6 (1), 69-76. Retrieved from https://repository.upenn.edu/svc/vol6/iss1/9 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/svc/vol6/iss1/9 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Psychological States and the Artist: The Problem of Michelangelo This contents is available in Studies in Visual Communication: https://repository.upenn.edu/svc/vol6/iss1/9 Psychological States and the Artist: The Problem of Michelangelo Jane Kromm The reality of Michelangelo's melancholia has in the As this last example suggests, characterizations of past been a major consideration in the work of schol­ Michelangelo's personality often lead to, and some­ ars attempting to understand the difficult personality of times replace, our critical understanding of stylistic this great artist. Interpretations have ranged from an problems and anomalies in Michelangelo's art. That extreme, virtually psychotic, melancholia to a general this tendency is pervasive is seen both in general ob­ melancholic state of mind affected to indicate creative servations that' 'works ... translate the passionate suffering. In recent scholarship, however, judgments side of his temperament'' and in specific instances have become more severe. For example, Howard Hib­ such as the David, in which "an ambiguous, unfulfilled, bard (1974:175, 179) maintains variously that Michel­ emotionally tense moment in the hero's career" is said angelo was "ultra-sensitive," "undoubtedly neurotic," ''to correspond to his [Michelangelo's] own mental and subject to "continual depression," in a somewhat state'' (de Tolnay 1975:2-3, Hibbard 1974:61 ). Or liberal use of modern psychological terms. Such po­ that the strangely antiheroic subject matter of the tentially diagnostic adjectives may be the modern ex­ Battle of Cascina gave Michelangelo the ''opportunity tension of a long-established tradition aptly summa­ of projecting ... the emotional stresses of his early rized by the Wittkowers: existence" (Hartt 1964:26). Although no one would seriously hold that Michel­ There cannot be many adjectives that have not, at one angelo was mad, few are willing to consider his art un­ time or another, been used to characterize his [Michelan­ touched by personal conflict. Remarks about such gelo's] personality. He has been called avaricious and conflict frequently accompany explanations of the dis­ generous; superhuman and puerile; modest and vain; vio­ crepancies in stylistic development in Michelangelo's lent, suspicious, jealous, misanthropic, extravagant, tor­ early works. Dissimilarities between the Battle of the mented, bizarre, and terrible, and this list is far from being complete. [1963:72] Centaurs and the Madonna of the Stairs are said to correspond to ''the need which the young artist felt to This quantity of adjectives, whose range alone sug­ express in disparate works the contrary tendencies of gests ambivalence, if not ambiguity, raises some con­ his being: the contemplative, seeking to evoke the cerns about their effect on Michelangelo studies. Spe­ eternal image of beauty, and the active, seeking to in­ cifically, questions about the function and subsequent carnate the turbulent forces of his own temperament'' influence of these descriptive terms come to mind. (de Tolnay 1975:2-3). The stylistic differences be­ Such usage is, it seems, primarily expressive, an au­ tween the Santo Spirito Crucifix and the San Petronio thor's attempt to convey some intangible aspect of the statues are similarly attributed to ''various aspects of artist's work and personality. Such a function is sug­ Michelangelo's unfolding personality, from an extreme gested by these observations: ''A tragic, a pathetic grace and gentleness to an emotional violence'· pre­ feeling is found in most of Michelangelo's works, viously formed by Michelangelo's childhood experi­ ... (Weinberger 1967:2), and "Michelangelo's grue­ ences of ''the rivalries of a male-dominated environ­ somest image of rejection is a bundle of shame and ment'' (Hartt 1964:20, 17). Such dichotomous despair'' (Steinberg 1975a:52-53). Sometimes a seri­ characteristics and their potential to result in conflict ous attempt is made to assimilate Michelangelo's are even used to describe Michelangelo's entire artis­ character to modern categories of psychology when tic career as an expression of "psychic as well as the suggestion of psychosis is implied: ''The Lives of overt conflict, a strong sense of frustration" (Hibbard Condivi and Vasari clearly reflect Michelangelo's para­ 1974:25) so pervasive that it can even be found in Mi­ noid hostility to Bramante" or the contention that Mi­ chelangelo's architectural designs in their "evocation chelangelo's rivalry with Raphael ''scarred Michelan­ of compression and frustration'' (Ackerman 1 966:1 7). gelo for life and impaired his perception of reality'' It would seem not merely coincidental that many of the (Hibbard 1974:92, 144). And even terms borrowed Wittkowers' adjectives take the form of antitheses. In a from psychological dynamics are recruited in the sug­ more critical spirit, such antitheses are not always gestion that a "gradual catharsis characterizes the de­ seen as reflections of Michelangelo's personality, but velopment of his personality as well as the structure of rather as "metaphors of strength under constraint, of his individual works" (de Tolnay 1960:94). individual will overruled" (Steinberg 1975b:37). Even though many of the personal qualities as­ cribed to Michelangelo carrying the implication of seri­ Jane Kromm is a Doctoral Candidate, Graduate Insti­ ous mental disturbance to modern thinking about per­ tute of Liberal Arts, Emory University, and a Lecturer sonality have been attributed to the topos of the in Art History, Atlanta College of Art. melancholic artist of the Renaissance (Wittkower 1963:chaps. 4 and 5), the tendency to consider Mi­ chelangelo unstable in a modern sense continues. Moreover, it is clear that such interpretations have a tendency to become serious avenues by which the 70 studies in Visual Communication style and iconography of Michelangelo's oeuvre are are less revealing for our purposes than is Michelan­ often approached. Therefore, in an attempt to clarify gelo's poetry when it treats the same subject. the problem of Michelangelo's state of mind, this study That a harsh life suits Michelangelo's interpretation will utilize some of Michelangelo's letters and poems, of life and art is expressed in the following excerpts his art, and the biographies by Condivi and Vasari. 1 from his poems of 1 532 and 1 54 7, respectively: Perhaps a clearer notion of the psychological charac­ teristics Michelangelo demonstrated may be ascer­ I live on my own death; if I see right, tained from these primary sources, along with a deter­ My life with an unhappy lot is happy; mination of whether diagnoses of severe conditions If ignorant how to live on death and worry, Enter into this fire, where I'm destroyed and burnt. such as neurosis, constant depression, and psychosis 5 are valid. Considering that melancholia and psychosis [Gilbert 1963:36, no. 54] have not always been so closely allied in the past as No one has mastery they are in our century, Renaissance attitudes toward Before he is at the end both phenomena will also be examined. A major Of his art and his life. source in this aspect of our investigation is Ariosto's [Gilbert 1963:1 73, no. 323]6 Orlando Furioso, in which, as it well known, the pro­ tagonist succumbs to madness. In this way it is hoped Michelangelo reveals his understanding of the benefits that an understanding of Michelangelo's personality, such an existence can provide; in fact, several poems and of the RenaisJ>ance conceptions of melancholia reveal not only a sense of the positive value of dis­ and madness, may be more accurately delineated. tress, but an ironic appreciation of the inherent para­ The experiences of Michelangelo that may be con­ dox: strued as evidence of melancholia seem to cluster around several characteristic features. These are a I get my happiness from my dejection, sense of suffering from the harshness of existence, And these disturbances give me rest; sadness revealed through introspective insight, grief To him who asks it, God may grant ill-fortune! and mourning, love, depression, and ruminative or ob­ [Gilbert 1963:150, no. 265; terza rima stanzas, Girardi sessional concerns. 267] Suffering from the harshness of existence is a fre­ quent theme in Michelangelo's letters. He refers to his My honored art, wherein I was for a time In such esteem, has brought me down to this: "miserable existence" and to his living conditions as Poor and old, under another's thumb. affording him ·'the greatest discomfort'' (Ramsden I am undone if I do not die fast! 2 1963:vol. I, letters 33 and 37). Most of these com­ [Gilbert 1963:151, no. 265; Girardi 267] plaints, however, are directed toward Michelangelo's family in circumstances in which their demands upon him appear to strain him, and are often completed by The harsh existence to which Michelangelo has the phrase that Michelangelo suffers only to help his subscribed is one of hard work and dedication, ac­ family. A letter of 1509 states: companied by the difficulties which such a course en­ tails, dealing as it does with the extremes of existence. For 12 years now I have gone about all over Italy, leading That such an interpretation of life is not without its pre­ a miserable life; I have borne every kind of humiliation, suffered every kind of hardship, worn myself to the bone tensions is acknowledged by Michelangelo through his with every kind of labor, risked my very life in a thousand ironic self-criticism.
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